About Kathy

Blog categories

Blog archives

Twitter Resources

Page

Updated 27 October 2011

Twitter is text-messaging on steroids (born March 2006). Twitter uses the SMS protocol to deliver short (140 characters or less) messages to your phone; your IM account; your Twitter home or m.twitter.com (accessible when logged in); or a stand-alone Twitter application. You decide where you want to read your “tweets,” the name for each short message.

On This Site

Overview

The Twitter service is free; messages sent to your cellphone may not be (depends on your cellular plan). My recommendation is to begin with the web-enabled Twitter home and branch out from there. TweetDeck is my favorite desktop app; Twitter is my favorite iPhone app.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

And it’s the possibilities that are interesting.

As envisioned, Twitter was not unlike Facebook status (before Facebook made the “is” in the “Kathy is…” prefix an option) … and not unlike LiveJournal, which was initially envisioned as a place for small groups of friends to share personal, “journal-like” entries with one another. As with the communications technologies that preceded them — telegraph, telephone, phonograph, Internet, web — the community created new ways to use the technology, ways not envisioned by the technologist/creator.

I’m working out a taxonomy of genres (2008). As with genres, this resource list is a work in progress. Add comments, please, if you have ideas for either genres or resources.

Twitter Shorthand

Follow: < follow twitterID >. The key to making Twitter work for you. Social networks have no value when there’s no network! When you follow someone, their tweets (posts) will appear on your home page (or however you chose to read your tweets). You can also follow by clicking on the “follow me” link on their Twitter webpage (http://twitter.com/twitterID)

Group Your Messages: < #hashtag >. Similar to tags on Flickr, hashtags are a means to “group” tweets around a topic. Hashtags were popularized during the 2007 San Diego fires. See hashtags.org for real-time tracking of Twitter hashtags.

Send Public Message (aka “at message”): < @TwitterID >. You can send an “@” message to anyone on Twitter. These appear on the public timeline.

Send Direct Message: <d TwitterID >. You can direct message people only if they are following you. Direct messages do not show up on the public timeline

Track A Subject/Person: < track word/phrase > Useful for those monitoring the twitterspace for organizational intelligence using your mobile device. Turn this off with < untrack word > More from the Twitter blog

Twitter Tutorials

Twitter In Plain English – Lee LeFever’s “Plain English” series of videos takes geek topics and makes them digestible by normal folks. In this video, he focuses on the initial Twitter concept of real-time updates to a small group of real-life friends.

Twitter Clients (applications)

Flock – a cross-platform “social web browser” that is powered by Mozilla (the guts of Firefox)

Like this:

14 thoughts on “Twitter Resources”

Apple now has Rhapsody as an app, which is a great start, but it is currently hampered by the inability to store locally on your iPod, and has a dismal 64kbps bit rate. If this changes, then it will somewhat negate this advantage for the Zune, but the 10 songs per month will still be a big plus in Zune Pass’ favor.

I’m also working as an intern at Webbed Marketing, a social media marketing agency. As Twitter fans, and fans of 80s rock, we recently recorded a Twibute to Twitter: Pour Some Twitter on Me. I hope you’ll give it a listen, and if you like it, add it to your list of links.